1. Technical Field
The invention relates generally to online authentication technology. More particularly, the invention relates to a system and method for synchronizing user contact information between an authentication proxy and an authorized site.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The explosive growth of the Internet is changing the ways in which we communicate, conduct business, and pursue entertainment. A few years ago, electronic commerce (E-commerce) was just an interesting concept. Today, not only are consumers buying an enormous volume of goods or services over the Internet, but the business-to-business E-commerce has taken off as well.
The basic cell of E-commerce is an electronic transaction, which requires a buyer or user to fill out one or more electronic forms on screen and click a button, such as “send”, “buy”, or “submit”. To complete such an electronic transaction, a user must go through an authentication process. In other words, the user must provide the seller or service provider with some information such as personal identification, contact information, or even financial information. The authentication process may take from several seconds to hours. Because each seller or service provider maintains its own authentication server and database, millions of sellers and service providers might share thousands of millions of consumers or users. Some of the consumers or users might be required to go through the same or similar authentication process repetitively if they have transactions with many sellers or service providers. This repetitive authentication not only wastes consumers' precious time, but also burdens the sellers or service providers because they have to expand their databases to keep detailed authentication information for a growing number of users. This situation brings forth a technical need to create a universal, unified single-logon infrastructure wherein a specific user may be authenticated once for all and wherein the authentication result is widely recognized by a large number of sellers or service providers.
As of the current state of art, the user has to perform a substantially similar registration step at each online merchant or service provider site. Consequently, the user might have to create and memorize many ID's and passwords, and may have provided contact information such as an e-mail address.
E-mail is the most prevalent method for contacting someone on the Internet. The e-mail address identifies a user's electronic mailbox. Most online merchants or service providers requires a user to provide an e-mail address as contact information. Some sellers or service providers confirm the e-mail address by sending e-mail to the e-mail address and requiring the user to reply to the e-mail address. Over a period of time, e-mail addresses become invalid as a specific user changes their e-mail address and neglects to update their information at the online merchant or service provider site.
As a universal, unified single-logon infrastructure becomes prevalent, the e-mail addresses that sellers or service providers have gathered could be different for a specific user. It is likely that some of the different e-mail addresses are invalid.
What is desired is a method for selecting a valid e-mail address or the most desirable e-mail address and synchronizing the e-mail address between the authentication proxy and an integrated authorized site.